


Turning Your Face To The Light

by the_names_of_those_who_love_the_lord



Category: 20th Century CE RPF
Genre: Gen, a kind of AU where Dahmer was left permanently disabled by the Scarver attack, it started out as an idea for a graphic novel but I think a fic would be cool too, this is a concept I wanted to get hammered out
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-09-13 05:38:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9108877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_names_of_those_who_love_the_lord/pseuds/the_names_of_those_who_love_the_lord
Summary: The year is 2000, and Jeffrey Dahmer's mother is dead.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please understand that I have no regard WHATSOEVER for this damp slice of panbread. This is more of a speculative fiction than anything else. The idea's been kicking at me for a while, so I thought I'd get it out of me and see how it went.

_Does it matter?-losing your sight?...._

_There's such splendid work for the blind:_

_And people will always be kind,_

_As you sit on the terrace remembering_

_And turning your face to the light._

_-_ 'Does It Matter?", by Siegfried Sassoon

* * *

LATE NOVEMBER, 2000

COLUMBIA CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION

Jeffrey Dahmer raised his bleary head from his pillow and grunted. It was still quite dark; flipping through an instinctive internal almanac, he guessed that it was about seven o'clock. He lay there for a moment, unmoving, wondering what had woken him.

His bladder was full, so there was that. 

But it turned out to have been an insistent knock that had roused him, for it came again, loud and sharp. The familiar voice of C.O. Thompson - "Mack" to Jeff, his mother and everyone on Earth - rang out from the corridor. "J.D.? You awake? Up 'n at 'em, come on."

Jeff levered himself into his elbows and forced his clumsy tongue to hoot in assent - " 'M up, 'm up."

"Alright, man. I'll be back in ten. Get ready for breakfast. You need any help?"

"Nnno, no."

"You sure?"

Jeff growled at him.

"Okay, okay." Mack walked down the corridor, tapping on doors, repeating his wake-up call. Jeff pushed himself into a sitting position and put his head in his hands.

He could feel the concave part where Chris Scarver had beaten in his skull, put him in a coma for two months back in 1994. The anniversary of the attack was coming up, Jeff noted. 

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, grabbed his crutch, and used it to hoist himself up. He hobbled across to the toilet and sat down to relieve himself. As he sat there, he probed the stitched, scabbed-over wasteland of his right eye socket, which he had a habit of doing. 

The eye had come out during the attack. He didn't remember it happening. The doctors had put it back in, but it'd gotten infected. They'd had to remove it altogether to keep him from going completely blind.

He thought back to that first day of consciousness after the coma; how he'd reached up in a panic to feel the bandages, his tongue, howling in frustration because he couldn't say  _what the fuck did you do to me?_

* * *

Since Jeff had returned from the hospital back in 1995, the correctional officers had been letting him eat his meals with the general population in the mess hall. It'd been impossible before the attack - there were prisoners who'd known some of the victims, loved them dearly. Some had dreamed of doing what Scarver had done. But all that fury had vanished the day the queasy result of those dreams turned up in the mess hall, limping along with a crutch jammed beneath his armpit.

Now, Jeff was half a tourist attraction, half a pet in the prison. The new COs often abandoned their posts in the rec room or the laundry to scurry up the stairs to his cell, risking their livelihoods for a glimpse of his battered head. The inmates and the regular staff treated him like a favourite child - they would ruffle his thick fair hair, or punk him gently on the shoulder, or maybe put an absentminded hand on his upper arm as they talked to someone else. He didn't really mind. Every touch was like a little voice saying, "I like you" in the back of his head.

Sitting down at the table, he was clapped and patted on the back by the men sitting alongside him. He had a rapist on his left and a gunrunner on his right, but in prison one learns to focus on the little details of a man at the expense of his bigger picture. He couldn't remember their names, but he knew that they were friendly, so he gave them both as best a smile he could manage with his missing teeth and settled into the oatmeal.

Nearby, out of his range of hearing, Mack had just received some troubling news.

"Dead? You're kidding me."

The prison counsellor, a nebbish, earnest young man fresh out of college, shook his head. "I wish I was, Mack. She passed yesterday. Cancer, apparently."

Mack glanced over at Jeff, shovelling down oatmeal and blissfully unaware of the fact that he was now motherless. "Was he expecting it?"

The counsellor sighed through his nose. "He knew she was sick, but he's very stubborn - kept insisting she'd pull through. I don't think Jeff likes our version of reality all that much. And his father tells him nothing."

Mack rubbed his stubbled chin and groaned. "Oh, man, i just remembered. It'll probably be on the news or some shit. He listens to the radio every day after breakfast. I don't want him to find out like that. Or he'll read the newspaper, or one of the new guys'll tell him for a joke...." 

"Why don't you tell him?"

"Because I'm not good at that kind of stuff!" Mack felt the frustration bubbling up in his chest; he tried hard to contain it. "You're the counsellor, Bobby! Do some counselling!"

Bobby frowned. "I just don't feel I know him well enough to....break that kind of thing to him. Can we call in his dad?"

"Oh, sure. Let's drag Lionel Dahmer all the way to Portage to tell his kid that his mom just died. That'll go down just great for everyone involved." Mack turned away, not trusting himself not to go after Bobby Winthrope with his fists. "I'm bringing him to your office in ten minutes. He likes those big chewy chocolate chip cookies they sell in the tuck shop. Give him one of those to ease him into it."

"He won't....hurt me, will he?"

Mack rolled his eyes. "Oh, sure. Jeffrey Dahmer, who can't walk without a cructch anymore. Oh, yeah, he'll fuck you up, alright." He left Bobby to dither and started his regular patrol of the mess hall.

* * *

Jefff didn't think it odd that his favourite kind of cookies were waiting for him on the counseller's desk when he shuffled through the door. He yelped in surprise and beamed at Bobby, who gave him a strained smile and said, "Yeah, I heard you liked that kind." When Jeff reached for his little norebook, he put out a hand to stop him, saying, "Oh, no, you don't have to thank me. Eat up, big guy."

Jeff shook his head in wonderment and ate both cookies standing up. He chewed like a cow ruminating on its cud, leery of hurting the soft bare parts of his gums. It took him fifteen minutes to finish them; only them did he lower himself onto the chair, using his crutch to buttress himself. 

Bobby sat down after he was settled. He took a breath, steepling his fingers. "So, how've you been lately?"

Out came the notebook and the pen.

_I've been pretty good lately what about you?_

"I'm fine, I'm fine. No trouble with anyone?"

_nope_

"And you're not lying to save somebody's ass?"

_with the state I'm in, I fear nothing I would snitch in a heartbeat_

"Hey, don't go stirring up anything, okay? You got a problem, you tell Mack or one of the other officers, don't keep anything to yourself."

The small talk continued back-and-forth for a few more minutes until Bobby signalled Jeff to stop writing halfway through a sentence. "Jeff, buddy....listen, I have some bad news."

He sighed and looked down at his hands, trying to think of a good way to break it to him; eventually, he decided there were only bad ways, so he looked up and said, "Your mom died last night."

Jeff sat there, his sourdough face going whiter and whiter as the seconds ticked by. He somehow roused himself to write,  _are you sure?_

Bobby tried to smile at him, but it came out all wonky and he held it for too long. "I'm so sorry, Jeff."

The murderer smiled back - his usual apologetic grin that he used whenever he'd made some social misstep. He leant hard on his crutch and raised himself, tentlike, to his feet. Now he was really smiling, showing all his jumbled teeth as a chimpanzee does. Bobby got up in a hurry. "Jeff, are you -"

And Jeffrey Dahmer bent over a little and retched, and everything in his stomach splashed onto the carpet. He teetered for a moment, listing like a dying ship, before his knees gave out on him and he collapsed beside his own warm mess.


	2. Chapter 2

By late evening, the howling had petered away into a thin, constant moan. At six o'clock, Mack, his belly sour and his head aching, decided to make his night shift that much worse and go check on Dahmer.

The grief was like nuclear fallout; all the other inmates on the landing were upset, too. They muttered in their cells as Mack made his reluctant way down the corridor, sitting hunched on their beds and pinning him with hollow, wrecked glares as he passed by. Even if he had never been in the cellblock before, he would've been able to find Dahmer's cell by following the sounds he was making. His gibbonish voice had gone high and scratchy from crying, and it reverberated off the walls like the hellish white noise the army liked to use on Iraqi POWs. No wonder the others were going nuts. 

"Please make him stop, Mack," one lifer groaned as he passed him. "He's been crying for hours. I feel like I'm gonna join in any minute."

"Have any of the other officers been down here?" Mack asked him, pausing.

The lifer shrugged. "Shruck and DeVille paid him a visit about two hours ago. I think they tied him down or some shit, like he was gonna bang his head off the walls maybe. I dunno."

When Mack reached the epicentre of the wails at last, he saw the truth of this. Dahmer lay spreadeagled on his bed, his wrists and ankles tied with linen straps to the rings welded to the frame. His head was twisted away from the bulletproof glass towards the wall. He rolled it around when he heard Mack's footsteps; upon seeing him, he tried to pull his splotchy face into a smile.

"Fuck," Mack muttered. He punched the code into the keypad to unlock the cell and strode inside. "Buddy, s'okay, I gotcha. Stay still 'til I get your hands loose." He untied Dahmer's wrists, filled with a slick disgust. Dahmer let his arms flop, shaking them before easing them to rest at his sides.

Mack went to undo his ankles, too, but was waved off - "Let me, let me."

He sat on the bed and watched Dahmer untie himself with a weary, glassy cast to his eye. The grief in that squeezed little cage had a radioactive quality; Mack felt as though he were being slowly burnt by it, as though he were slumped on a rock in the desert in the midday heat.

Dahmer drew his knees up to his chest and sighed, rubbing his ankles.

"I know you're hurting right now," Mack told him, "but you're not gonna do anything stupid, right?'

The big man shook his head, not looking up from his blanket. He reached down and picked his notebook and pencil off the floor. Flicking to a fresh page, he scrawled:  _this is the worst I've felt for a long time but it's not the kind of hurt that makes me want to kill myself_

"That's good." Mack put a hand on his broad shoulder. "Keep talking. It'll help, I promise."

_what really cuts me up is how Mom died without me there with her_

"Jeff, you couldn't have gone. The chief would never have let you out. She knew that."

 _I know. she wrote me two weeks ago -_ Jeff stopped and sniffed hard, dashing tears from his eyes with his fist -  _to let me know that she wasn't going to be around for much longer, but I thought_

The pencil hovered above the page for a moment, then on the sheet. Dahmer tossed his notebook to the floor like a frustrated child and flopped onto his side. He grabbed his pillow, pressed it into his face, and screamed into it.

"Jeff," Mack barked, "Jeff, no, stop it -" But he couldn't stop him. The realisation that there was a void where Dahmer's mother used to be hit him over and over, like a wave; it would recede for a while, and then it would rush back upon him with a sound like a slap.

* * *

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Dahmer spent most of the next day in the counsellor's office. He hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, and his faded eye glared at Bobby from the bruise-coloured hollow of its socket. It was one thing to have to watch it roll around the room, but what frightened Bobby the most was the blank, freakish calm of the sealed place where its neighbour had been.

He took a breath and leaned forward.

"How're you holding up?"

Dahmer groaned and rocked back and forth, throwing himself into it like a child. His face was grey and tense. Grabbing his pad and pencil, he wrote, _I don't feel well._

"Do you want me to get you some antacids or something?"

Dahmer shook his dented head. Again, he scribbled, _it's not that Bobby it's more like a whole bunch of really bad feelings and I don't think Im dealing so well with them._

"Yeah, I can see that." Bobby reached across the table and gave Dahmer an awkward pat on his shoulder. "This is the hardest part, Jeff. I won't lie to you and say it'll get better right away. You just have to stick with it."

_I guess it was my turn anyway_

Bobby angled his head at the paper, frowning. "Your turn for what?"

 _My turn to lose someone important._ The tears came then, slipping down the soft white cheeks, creeping along the sharp nose and leaking into the puffy mouth that had pursed itself on a million TV screens. Dahmer was right. He had soaked himself in the blood of so many sons, ripped children from their mothers. Now, he faced into the void left by his own mother with stoicism and - as Bobby was to wearily reflect - self-loathing.

* * *

The next day was not all bleak: Dahmer's father made his usual pilgrammage to visit his son. He came alone, sitting up straight and composed in the waiting room like a small, mannerly grim reaper.

When Dahmer saw him, a weak cry escaped his throat and he lurched forward, breaking away from the hold Mack had on him. He limped over to the table, breathing hard through his nose, as wild and clumsy as a wounded bull. Lionel caught him in his arms and held him there, muttering in his ear. not caring that his son's crutch jabbed awkwardly into his stomach. The hug was both affectionate and coldly practical: exertion could burst any of the fragile vessels that trembled in the soft part of Jeff's sunk-in head. 

When he was sure he'd calmed down, Lionel released Jeff, who sank shaking into the hard plastic chair. Lionel took his own seat and stared at his damaged son, as if - even after all these years - he still could not comrehend him.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I couldn't come up any sooner." Jeff waved this away with an irritated hand - Lionel shouldn't be sorry. He'd been busy. It was okay. "Are they treating you well?" Head nod. Head shake. Jeff knew that some people were pushing him around while others went out of their way to cosset him, and he never told which was which. Lionel sighed, recognising a lost battle without having to fight it, and moved onto his next question: "So....how are you holding up?"

Out came the pad.

 _not good_ , Jeff scribbled.  _not good at all._

"You knew she was sick, Jeff. She's had the cancer since -what? - 1993, at least. She held out for as long as she could."

The trembling of Jeff's hand made his writing difficult to decipher. The words tangled together like string:  _Dad I really miss her I want her back I should have been there_

"I know, son." Lionel reached out and patted his son's fat, pale forearm. "It wasn't your fault. She didn't blame you for that."

_did you see her in the hospital_

"Well...." Lionel looked at his interlaced fingers. "I got a call saying, y'know, she wasn't going to last much longer, and I thought it over for about an hour, and I decided I'd go see her, in case she wanted to pass on any messages to you." He brushed some lint off the lapel of his coat. "I didn't tell your stepmother where I was going. It'd have been awkward."

_did Mom say anything_

At long last, Lionel worked up the courage to meet Jeff's remaining eye. "Yes. She said she loved you and your brother more than anything else in her life. And - well, she asked you to forgive her. For not being around enough when you were growing up."

Jeff's face crumpled. It was hard to look at, like the collapse of a high-rise building. Lionel, discreet and unmoved, passed him a tissue, and Jeff sobbed into it.

In his grief, he forewent the pad and tried to make his mouth say what his thoughts were, but the free-weight had muted him long ago. He could only keen and rock, keen and rock, as his father and two guards looked on.

When he'd recovered somewhat, he dashed a few words onto the page:  _when's the funeral_

Lionel grimaced. "Jeff -"

His son's face gave him pause, and he relented.

"Alright. It's in a week's time, in Chippewa Falls." He side-eyed the guards. "But there's no way they'll let you out for it. I mean, setting aside your....condition, it'd cause uproar. You know that as well as anybody."

 _no,_ __Jeff scribbled. _I want to say goodbye to her. I couldn't be there for her when she died, but I can at least see her being laid to rest. I'm going to get there._


	4. Chapter 4

That night, Mack made a special visit to the glass cage where his most notorious charge lived. He unlocked it manually and stepped inside, leaving the door closed but still unlocked. Jeff was too slow, now, to escape; and anyway, there was nowhere to go.

The man himself lay on his bed, apparently asleep. Gospel music played softly on his little transistor radio, and a coffee-table  _National Geographic_ photobook lay splayed open beside him. 

Mack eased himself onto the end of his bed and watched him for a few minutes. In the semi-dark of Cell 648, it was easier to look at him. With his shirt rucked up to show his fat belly and his fingers grazing the side of his mouth, he looked like a giant toddler. Sighing, Matt reached over and tapped his socked foot to stir him.

The single hazel eye flickered open, rolled, and centered on Mack. Jeff mumbled a sleepy greeting and felt around for his glasses. Mack found them for him and got up to slide them onto his face. He helped Jeff to sit up, and prop himself against the headboard.

"....Thanks," Jeff muttered. It took a lot of effort, and he seemed to be pleased at managing it.

"You're getting better at that," Mack told him. "Talking, I mean. The therapist said you might not need your notebook in a couple of years' time." 

Jeff nodded, but it was clear he wasn't really listening. Mack could tell, from how his movements were speeding up, that he had something to tell him. He got up to get his notebook and pencil and pushed them into his hands.

"Go on, tell me what it is."

The revelation, when it came, sank his heart:  _I'm gonna go to Mom's funeral_

"Oh! That's, uhh....that's really great, Jeff."

Indignation:  _you don't believe it'll happen_

"Um, well, a lot of things have to happen to get somebody like you out of the prison, buddy."

_you think it's possible?_

"I think it wouldn't hurt to get it forwarded to the office, see what they say. Will I do that for you?"

_please! I'm not so good at stuff like that_

"Yeah, I know. Don't sweat it. I'll handle it."

* * *

"You shouldn't have handled this," the prison director growled the following morning.

Mack spread his hands in defeat. "The guy trusted me with it. I couldn't disappoint him. I've worked my ass off, mind my French, to gain his trust again after the Scarver incident."

"I'm aware." The director frowned at the written request on the desk. "Look, I have sympathy for him. If he were less of a notoriety, I would let him go. But, Mack, it'd be easier to take a blue whale out of the ocean and put it in fucking Seaworld. It wouldn't be fair on the families of the victims. his mother's family, or him. The stress alone could kill him. I mean, have you considered the logistics of this? How many people it'd take to keep him and the public from one another?"

Mack took a deep breath; he was starting to get frustrated. "He doesn't actually need that many officers around him, sir. The trial was eight years ago. People have mostly forgotten about him, and the head injury kind of made everyone back off a little. It could work. Nobody needs to know...."

"Oh, the powers that be are way ahead of you." The director grimaced. "I fielded a call today from the Milwaukee Sentinel, asking if we planned to let what's left of the Milwaukee Monster out on compassionate leave."

"What did you say?"

The director glared at Mack. "To them? No comment. To _you,_ though, I'm saying, 'Not in a million fucking years.' I'm sorry, Mack, but it can't happen. What if somebody decided to throw something at him, hit him on the head where it's soft? He'd die right there. And I'd be the one responsible for letting him out in the first place."

"Sir, please -" Mack broke off and took a deep breath. The director disapproved of begging. "I'd look out for him."

"I'm not saying you wouldn't Mack, I'm saying that we're dealing with a  _necrophile_ who  _ate a child_ and - oh, fuck me, how'd he get in here?!"

Mack whipped his head around. There, at the frosted-glass window, stood the man himself, leaning on his crutch and waving. Mack bit his tongue and glanced back at the director for guidance.

The man shook his head. "Let the bastard in. Someone, somewhere, is due for a demotion...."

Mack opened the door and helped Jeff manoeuvre over the raised threshold. The murderer was smiling, his notebook in his free hand, his pencil in his shirt pocket. Mack didn't know if he was grinning to be friendly, or because he'd slipped past security to get into the office. Of course, since the accident, he hadn't been monitored too closely; he wasn't about to do much harm wherever he went. Still, rules were rules. The Milwaukee Monster couldn't just drop by whenever he felt like it.

"Hey, big guy, what's going on?"

"Hi," Jeff croaked. "Can....I sit?"

The director sighed. "Sure, sure. Whatever. What do you want, Jeff?"

Out came the little notebook.  _Hello sir I have a request and I didn't know where I could get a form but can I go on compassionate leave to my moms funeral_

The director steepled his fingers and frowned. "Jeff...."

Another scrawl:  _I know I have done alot of bad things but I never got to say goodbye to her and Id feel better if I could be there in the church with my brother and my dad. Although I don't think dad will come_

 _"_ Aw, hell." The director kneaded his forehead and gestured at Mack. "Mack, can you explain?"

Mack tried as best as he could: "Jeff....buddy, it'd be very difficult. Word would get out. People would show up to throw stuff at you. You'd need a full bodyguard, secure transport. There'd be a crowd waiting for you when the service finished, probably. You could be torn to pieces."

One last attempt at persuasion:  _You can lock me up forever and throw away the key after I dont care I just want to say goodbye and see my brother and everyone_

Mack frowned. "Hold on, doesn't your brother have kids? If they're gonna be at the funeral, then you won't be able to go. You're on the registry, can I remind you of that?"

Jeff's meaty shoulders sagged. He sighed - it was a terrible thing to hear, because his sighs were the same sound as they had been before the attack - and rose to his feet. 

Mack linked arms with him to escort him out. When the door shut behind them, the Director put his head into his hands for some time.

In a murmur, so low as to be indistinguishable from voiceless thought, he said, "I'm gonna have to let him go."


End file.
